Chapter 5 #5
She shakes her head, her expression sympathetic. “Mrs. Kozlov says he called. He won’t be home until very late. He has... business to attend to.” She says the last part carefully, like she’s repeating what she was told to say. “You’ll be dining alone.”
Right. Of course. Of course he won’t be here.
He got what he needed from me last night—the consummation to make the marriage official in the eyes of the community.
The proof that he’d claimed his revenge.
Now he can go back to pretending I don’t exist. Go back to his business, his life, his world that has nothing to do with the unwanted wife he’s locked in his house.
“Thank you, Anya,” I manage to say.
The formal dining room is exactly that, formal and utterly impersonal.
A polished mahogany table that could seat twenty, maybe thirty people, stretches the length of the room. The chandelier overhead is massive—crystal and gold, dripping with prisms that catch the light and throw rainbows across the walls. More expensive art. More everything.
But there’s only one place setting. Mine. At the end of this enormous table, looking small and ridiculous and so fucking lonely I want to cry.
The meal is excellent. Perfectly cooked salmon with a lemon butter sauce that probably took someone hours to prepare.
Roasted asparagus and baby potatoes and carrots seasoned to perfection.
Risotto that’s creamy and rich, the kind you pay forty or fifty dollars for at an Italian restaurant.
A dessert of panna cotta with berry compote that’s so beautiful it looks like art.
All of it served by Anya, who quietly sets each course down. Each time she enters, she’s silent except for the soft clink of dishes being set down. Each time she leaves, the door closes with a gentle click that somehow sounds like a cell door locking.
I eat alone in that massive room, the chandelier casting shadows that dance across the walls. The silence is so complete I can hear my own breathing, the scrape of my fork against the plate, the whisper of fabric when I shift in my chair.
This is my life now. Expensive meals eaten alone. A beautiful prison. Guards and hostile staff. A husband who hates me and only touched me once to establish ownership, who can’t even bear to be in the same house as me during waking hours.
And a secret growing inside me that could destroy everything.
I manage to eat most of the meal. I guess my appetite is better in the evening than it was this morning, which is something to be grateful for, I suppose. Small mercies. But each bite feels like ashes in my mouth, tasteless and joyless.
When I finally retreat to my bedroom, I’m exhausted but too anxious to sleep.
I pace the room, from the windows overlooking the grounds to the door and back again. Back and forth. Back and forth. My feet wear a path in the plush carpet. The room is dimly lit now, shadows gathering in the corners, and it feels even larger in the darkness. More empty. More lonely.
My hand keeps drifting to my stomach. A gesture I really need to stop making before someone notices. But I can’t help it. It’s the only thing that feels real right now. The only thing connecting me to Alexei, to the life we should have had, to the future that was stolen from us.
I think about last night and immediately wish I hadn’t. The memories assault me—Dimitri’s hands on my body, his mouth on my skin, the way he made me feel things I shouldn’t have felt. The pleasure that had torn through me, overwhelming and consuming and so intense I’d lost myself completely.
I betrayed Alexei. I let his brother touch me, claim me, possess me. And the worst part—the part that makes me hate myself—is that my body had responded. I had wanted it and I wanted more.
What does that make me? What kind of person lets herself enjoy sex with the man who married her for revenge less than two weeks after losing the man she loved?
The worst type of person, that’s what kind.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, my whole body shaking with silent sobs. I curl forward, hugging my knees to my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible. Trying to disappear.
Will Dimitri come to my room tonight? Will he expect me to submit to him again? The thought fills me with equal parts dread and that shameful, unwanted anticipation. My body remembers him. It want him, even though my mind screams that it’s wrong.
I wait, tense and anxious, listening for footsteps in the hallway. For the sound of that door opening. For him to appear and claim what he thinks is his.
But hours pass, and he doesn’t come.
The clock on the nightstand ticks past midnight. Past one. Past two. And still, he doesn’t come.
He meant what he said. Once was enough. He’s done with me.
I should be relieved and grateful that I don’t have to face him again or let him touch me. I don’t have to feel that confusing tangle of fear and desire.
Instead, I feel... abandoned. Forgotten. Like I’m not even worth the effort of hating anymore.
I finally lie down around three in the morning, still fully dressed, on top of the covers. I’m too tired to undress, too exhausted to go through the motions of getting ready for bed. I just lie there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, my hand pressed against my stomach.
“You deserve better,” I whisper to the baby. “You deserve a father who is still alive. You deserve to be born into a home where there’s love and laughter. You don’t deserve this.”
I cry silently into my pillow, mourning everything I’ve lost—my freedom, Alexei, my old life, my innocence, and my sense of self.
I’m trapped in this beautiful house with a secret that could get me killed, married to a man who can’t even stand to be near me, cut off from everyone who loves me.
And somewhere out there, Dimitri is avoiding this house, me, and the complicated reality of what he’s done.
Tomorrow will be the same as today. And the day after that. And the day after that. Days stretching out before me like an endless hallway with no exit. Just this beautiful prison and the crushing loneliness and the baby growing inside me day by day.
I’ve never felt more alone. I’ve never felt more terrified. And I’ve never felt more hopeless.
This is my life now. This is forever. And I don’t know how I'm going to survive it.